Warning: This is a summary book, intended to harmonize with Barack Obama’s compelling story, A Promised Land, not to replace it. 

President Barack Obama relates the story of his unlikely journey starting as a young boy in Indonesia and Hawaii. His time in prep school showed more passion for his jump shot and partying than studying. We experience his college years under the admitted influence of Marxism, and into Harvard Law and as the President of the Law Review - which would launch his political career with a substantial write-up in The New York Times. We sample his rapid rise to the Senate and then the presidency under the tutelage of professionals like David Axelrod and Rahm Emanuel of Chicago: but supposedly a “grassroots” effort. 

Obama gets plenty of partisan help. Favored candidates, even incumbents, step aside or hand him their campaign, and dirt leaked from sealed court documents, at just the right time, buries his opponents. His path to the presidency miraculously cleared, he finds the keynote tossed at his feet by John Kerry at the DNC to make him famous. John Kerry’s staff infuses his campaign. As Obama’s republican opponent for President, John McCain offers no plan to solve the financial crisis and ignores states he must have to win, ensuring Obama’s success. His immediate launch of an aggressive leftist agenda to “change” the world spends more than all other previous presidents combined.

What is amazing is that Obama reveals compromising situations and connections, and stimulates suspicion, in his own book - either a form of confession or a series of mistakes.

Whether you are an Obama lover or hater, this summary offers plenty that is new to evaluate. Whether Obama worked for himself or larger partisan and international forces, you will appreciate how hard he labored for eight years and what talents he had for oratory and inspiration based on our embarrassing history of racism against Blacks and American Indians.